An entrée of Cognitive Science with an occasional side of whatever the hell else I want to talk about.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

The Importance of Names

What's in a name, for a concept I mean? Cognitive psychologists studying concepts and categorization have, notby and large, treated concept names (often called "category labels") as just another kind of feature. I'm not sure there's really been any good reason to do this, other than the fact that the models of categorization that have been most prominent over the years haven't had straightforward ways for dealing with labels as anything other than features. Treating names as just another piece of information about a category like any other probably seems pretty counterintuitive to many outside of cognitive psychology. Concept names receive a lot of attention in philosophy, for instance, and the same is true for other areas of psychology, particularly clinical psychology, where the labels for mental illnesses, and their influences on the reasoning of both patients and therapists, are often the topic of duscussion, and in other social sciences, such as sociology with its "labeling theory." But so long as concept researchers didn't have any data from studies of concepts to indicate that labels should be treated differently, few if any saw fit to challenge the equivalence of labels and other features. Of course, since no one was questioning it, there wasn't much of an incentive to go out and look for such data. Even in science, dogmas can be self-perpetuating.

But with the theory theory, and the corresponding psychological essentialism view of concepts, came a recognition that concept names might be important. Since concepts are treated as embedded in a larger knowledge structure, and according to psychological essentialism, concept names refer to underlying essences (ala Putnam), whether they exist or not, it made sense to treat names as unique among category features, if they could be treated as features at all. If this is true, then concept names should be treated as of a different kind than other features of concepts.

Concept researchers took heart, and finally went out and sought data about the relationship between names and other features. For example, Yamauchi and Markman1 used the classic classification paradigm, in which participants are given features and asked to infer the category label, and a variation of that paradigm, in which participants are given the category label and some features, and asked to infer a missing feature. If labels are just like any other features, then the variation (called the "inference task," perhaps unwisely, since both tasks involve an inference), then participants should perform similarly in both tasks. However, if labels are different from other features, then when participants are given the label, the sorts of inferences they make should be diferent. Yamauchi and Markman's experiments showed that people do in fact treat the label differently. When the label is present, participants infer category-typical features more often, even when the other features they are given are more similar to the features of contrast categories. For instance, if the prototype of category A is

1 1 1 1

and the prototype of category B is

0 0 0 0

where 1's and 0's represent the value on a particular feature dimension (e.g., 1=tall and 0=short), and participants receive the category label A, along with three features, 0 0 0, they are more likely to infer that the fourth feature will be a 1, even though the three 0's makes the instance about which they are making an inference more similar to the prototype of category B. In other words, given the implication of category membership that comes with the presence of the category name, people will infer category-typical features when the label is present, even when all of the other information seems to contradict this inference. This finding is a blow both to similarity-based views in general and their belief that labels are just ordinary features.

In developmental research, similar results have been found. For instance, in one study2, children were presented with information about a person (e.g., she eats a lot of carrots), and then either given a label (e.g., "She is a carrot-eater") or a sentence that confirms that information ("She eats carrots whenever she can"). The results showed that children were much more likely to make inferences about a person when given a label, and that they believed the traits implied by the label were much more stable than when they were attributed to the person without the label. Thus, children think that a carrot-eater is much more likely to be eating carrots at some later date than someone who just eats carrots whenever she can. Once again, it appears that concept names, and their implications of category membership, are influencing the inferences that people will make about instances, and furthermore, that the importance of names develops fairly early in childhood (the children in the study were between 5 and 7).

The Markman and Yamauchi studies used artificial categories that were designed to be like natural kinds (complete with bug-like pictures), and the carrot-eater studies used trait concepts applied to humans. It is reasonable to assume that people are essentialists about natural kinds, and perhaps even human personalities, but what about artifacts? Putnam's "Twin Earth" thought experiment, and the original claims of psychological essentialism, are difficult to apply to artifacts. Water can be said to have an essence (its chemical composition, H2O), but what is the essence of a chair? If artifacts don't have essences, are artifact labels more like the labels of natural kinds and human traits, or are they more like other artifact features? Paul Bloom3 has recently argued that psychological essentialism does apply to artifacts. People treat the intentions of the author (or creator) as the essence of artifacts. This explains why certain objects are treated as members of artifact categories despite being highly dissimilar from other members of that category (e.g., bean bag chairs). Conducing experiments similar to the Yamauchi and Markman and carrot-eater studies on artifacts might help to confirm Bloom's view.

Or maybe not. Do labels really refer to essences? A recent review of the developmental literature has shown that concept names have much more influence on children's reasoning about artifacts than about natural kinds, with human traits being somewhere in between the two4. This is the opposite of what we would expect from traditional essentialist theories. Furthermore, in a now imfamous study, Barbara Malt has shown that people's use of the name "water" is not consistent with their essentialist intuitions about water5. She asked people about their beliefs about the amount of water in different kinds of liquids, and showed that such beliefs were not correlated with their use of the label "water." For instance, tea and lemonade were believed to have a much higher water (as in H2O) content than a natural lake, but the liquid in lakes is referred to as water, while lemonade and tea are referred to as, well, "lemonade" and "tea." If this is the case, then psychological essentialism may ot explain the importance of names, and the importance of names in artifacts may not provide evidence of psychological essentialism about artifacts.

What are names, then? Clearly they are important, but why? What information do they carry with them that other features do not? If labels do not refer to underlying essences, how do we explain their deep connection to category membership, as demonstrated in the inference and carrot-eater studies? My own suspicion is that names are closely connected to the position that a concept takes in a larger relational system. Thus, names not only provide information about typical features and essences (such as function for artifacts and chemical composition or genetic make up for natural kinds), but also how a concept differs from related concepts, and how it fits into our knowledge base. I think of names as sort of like suitcases that are held in the hands of relations. When names are used, the suitcases can be unpacked, and out will flow all sorts of relational information. Many names may even be empty suitcases, telling us little more than where a concept is situated in a relational system. It is in these cases that people hold strong essentialist intuitions, but when queried, are unable to express what the essences of such concepts may be. Such appears to be the case for concepts like GAME, for instance. The position of the suitcase itself is all of the information we really have about the concept. Any inferences we make will have to come from that. Of course, there's no direct empirical evidence for my view, but there's not much direct empirical evidence for other views of names either, since the essentialist theory of names has been called into question. So, mine's as good as anyone elses, from an empirical standpoint.

60 comments:

Very, very interesting. Tell me, do you apply this issue to the very nature of philosophical categories in various arguments? I'm here thinking of epistemology where many arguments depend upon how one takes a label like pain or belief. (I'm here thinking of a recent discussion on Certain Doubts and several other philosophy blogs) At a point, it seems the problem is the problem of labels and what we map out with the label. Yet there seems no reason to necessarily pick one approach to labels above others.

This of course gets into the whole experimental philosophy debate. I think you've convinced me that the approach some are taking (surveys and samples) is quite unhelpful. But do you think the studies on labels you mention here are helpful?

Clark, the Certain Doubts post (which is here, in case anyone's reading this who hasn't read that) presents a pretty nice analog to the Malt experiment, with "pain" substituted for "water." In this case, the doctor is an essentialist about pain. Pain's essence, for him, is a certain physiological state or type of state, presumably consisting of certain patterns of neural firings in the brain and elsewhere in the body. In the Certain Doubts example, the ordinary use of "pain" doesn't quite line up with the essentialist use of "pain." If we ignore all of the problems with reductionist accounts of mental states, for the moment, then the Certain Doubts example might help to explain what's going on in the Malt example. In this case, there are clearly two different senses of "pain." One refers to the experience of pain, and one to the physiological condition of pain. The doctor thinks they should line up, but in ordinary usage, they don't. The same is true for water. It's almost comical that we can say "Lemonade is composed of 98% water, and the Great Salt Lake is composed of 75% water, but lemonade is not water, while the Great Salt Lake is." Water's clearly serving double duty here, with the technical term referring to H2O, and used to refer to the content of lemonade and the Great Salt Lake, while the ordinary term referring to whatever it is we ordinarly refer to as "water," which does not include lemonade, but does include the lake. Once again, the question is how much should we expect them to line up?

How you answer this question for pain and water (and you may come up with two different answers for the two different concepts), and how much of a role empirical research into how people represent and use concepts, and how they use their names, can play in answering that questions, depends on your philosphical perspective. If you really are a essentialist, or a reductionist of any sort, then you probably think that "water" should always refer to H2O, and any use that doesn't is incorrect. The same could be said of pain, though one might be a reductionist about water and not about pain (believing that pain is an irreducible qualitative mental state). In this case, empirical data about how people use concepts in ordinary (non-scientific/philosophical) cognition won't tell us much, other than that people are using the concepts wrong. If, on the other hand, one believes that the meaning/intension of a concept is determined by its use, and that names apply to concepts (as used), then empirical data about how people actually use concepts is important. It will tell us what "water" really is. We'd probably have to conclude that "water" is at least two different things, depending on the context and the person using the name/concept. We could even distinguish them, in philosophical discussions, by referring to the ordinary sense as "water," and the technical sense as "t-water" (for techinical water) or "f-water" (for formal water), or whatever you want to label it.

If we take this second approach, then it would be important for any philosophical theory of meaning and reference to analyze both concepts and their names. In that case, philosophers couldn't get by simply saying that "water" refers to H2O, or that all names refer to essences. To say this, we'd have to figure out what essence "water" could posssibly refer to in its ordinary use. What essence encompasses lake water and pure H2O, but not liquids that have an H2O content that is in between the two? It's probably not going to be a physical essence.

I'm inclined to favor the latter approach. After all, as Putnam readily admits, names are often used before we have made the scientific discoveries that illuminate the essences to which they are supposed to refer. We can certainly fault people for using of "water" in ways that don't line up with H2O content prior to a time when scientists have discovered that water is composed of one hydrogen and two oxygen atoms. If that wasn't previously the intension of "water," then why should it be now? To make it so, we'd have to go about changing the extensions of all of the words with pre-scientific extensions that don't line up with their post-scientific intensions. That may work just fine for chemists, but why should philosophers limit their analysis of language and meaning to the ways in which chemists have to use names?

First, apologies for my last post, which totally missed some relevant facts. I was a complete stress wreck that day and simply missed what you said. I tried to say something earlier, but comments were slow in coming.

As for this discussion, I can offer wha a older tradition says about this: we name things as we come to know them, but we do not know the essences first.

This being said, knowledge still has an order to essence, even when it is attained only indistinctly, by indistinct and non- essential names.

I think all this is contained in a name like "water". Our first ideas of it are of the stuff in the lake, and we oppose water in this sense to both tea and beer. Later on, we come to know water as a certain substratum, and so we see that tea is actually more "water" in this sense than lake Erie. Nevertheless, we keep the same name, even though the exact meaning has changed. The same happens with "atom" (from "uncuttable" to a "a wave/particle") or "sunrise" (from geocentrism to heliocentrism) or "virus" (from "poison" to um...) or any other term that has grown to get closer to the essence that the term always strived to name.

The older ideas will always stick around, of course, and make folks sound silly.

shula,There is actually some research demonstrating that the course of individual cognitive development looks, in many ways, like the course of development from pre-scientific societies to scientific ones. In essence, we go from a similarity-based conceptual scheme to a more relational one (some, like Ahn, call it "mechanistic," because they focus on causal knowledge). It could be said that this is because we have learned facts about the underlying properties of the world and their causal connections to the surface properties, and thus our concepts become more and more determined by essences. It could also be said that young children have a fairly impoverished knowledge base, and that as that knowledge base grows, the interrelations between concepts become numerous enough to allow for nonsimilarity-based processing. The two explanations aren't mutually exclusive, but the second one does not have all of the implications of the first.

tn chaussuresEnter the necessary language translation, up to 200 bytes winter, moves frequently in China, nike chaussures showing that the deep strategy of the Chinese market. Harvard Business School, nike tnaccording to the relevant survey data show that in recent years the Chinese market three brands, Adidas, mens clothingpolo shirts Li Ning market share at 21 percent, respectively, 20%, 17%. The brand is first-line to three lines of urban competition for mutual penetration. Side of theworld,announced layoffs, while China's large-scale facilities fists. The sporting goods giant Nike's every move in the winter will be fully exposed its strategy. Years later, the Nike, Inc. announced the world's Fan

China Wholesale has been described as the world’s factory. This phenomenom is typified by the rise of buy products wholesalebusiness. Incredible range of products available with wholesale from china“Low Price and High Quality” not only reaches directly to their target clients worldwide but also ensures that China Wholesalers from China means margins you cannot find elsewhere and China Wholesale will skyroket your profits.

Thank you so much!!cheap polo shirts men'ssweate,Burberry Polo Shirts lacoste sweater, ralph lauren Columbia Jackets,ski clothing. Free Shipping, PayPal Payment. Enjoy your shopping experience on mensclothingus.com.You can find the father who desire fashionable, intellectual mens clothing simultaneouslyGod bless you!I really agree with your opinions.Also,there are some new fashion things here,gillette razor blades.gillette mach3 razor bladesfor men.As for ladies,gillette venus razor blades must the best gift for you in summer,gillette fusion blades are all the best choice for you.Fantastic!God bless you!Meanwhile,you can visit my ,we have the highest quality but the lowest price fashion products wholesale from China.Here are the most popular China Wholesale products for all of you.You can visit .Also the is a great choice for you.

Charlestoncheap columbia jackets. turned a pair of double plays to do the trick. spyder jacketsThe had at least one runner on in every inning but the first and outhit the RiverDogs by a 12-6 margin Lawal should be a focal point of the Yellow cheap polo shirts along with highly touted newcomer, 6-9 Derrick Favors, rated as the No. 1 power forward on the ESPNU 100. The Yellow Jackets

There was this guy who believed very much in true love and decided to take his time to wait for his right girl to appear. He believed that there would definitely be someone special out there for him, but none came.Every year at Christmas, his ex-girlfriend would return from Vancouver to look him up. He was aware that she still held some hope of re-kindling the past romance with him. He did not wish to mislead her in any way. nike shoxsSo he would always get one of his girl friends to pose as his steady whenever she came back. That went on for several years and each year, the guy would get a different girl to pose as his romantic interest. So whenever the ex-girlfriend came to visit him, she would be led into believing that it was all over between her and the guy. nike womens shoes The girl took all those rather well, often trying to casually tease him about his different girlfriends, or so, as it seemed! In fact, the girl often wept in secret whenever she saw him with another girl, but she was too proud to admit it. Still, every Christmas, she returned, hoping to re-kindle some form of romance. But each time, she returned to Vancouver feeling disappointed.Finally she decided that she could not play that game any longer. puma mens shoes Therefore, she confronted him and professed that after all those years, he was still the only man that she had ever loved. mens puma shoesAlthough the guy knew of her feelings for him, he was still taken back and have never expected her to react that way. He always thought that she would slowly forget about him over time and come to terms that it was all over between them. nike shox Although he was touched by her undying love for him and wanted so much to accept her again, he remembered why he rejected her in the first place-she was not the one he wanted. nike 360 air maxSo he hardened his heart and turned her down cruelly. nike running shoesSince then, three years have passed and the girl never return anymore. They never even wrote to each other. NIKE air shoes The guy went on with his life..... still searching for the one but somehow deep inside him, he missed the girl.On the Christmas of 1995, he went to his friend's party alone. "Hey, how come all alone this year? Where are all your girlfriends? What happened to that Vancouver babe who joins you every Christmas?", asked one of his friend.nike air max He felt warm and comforted by his friend's queries about her, still he just surged on.Then, he came upon one of his many girlfriends whom he once requested to pose as his steady. He wanted so much to ignore her ..... not that he was impolite,wholesale nike shoes but because at that moment, he just didn't feel comfortable with those girlfriends anymore. nike shox torchIt was almost like he was being judged by them. The girl saw him and shouted across the floor for him. Unable to avoid her, he went up to acknowledge her."Hi......how are you? Enjoying the party?" the girl asked."Sure.....yeah!", he replied.She was slightly tipsy..... must be from the whiskey on her hand.

Your article is very good.I like it very much.Once upon a time, there was a mouse father.He wanted to marry his daughter to the greatest person in the world.But, who was the greatest person in the world?Oh! puma ferrari shoescheap nike shoesThe sun! He must be the greatest person in the world.The mouse father went to talk to the sun."Hello! Mr. Sun. puma shoesferrari shoesI know you are the greatest person in the world.Would you marry my daughter?""What? I'm not the greatest person in the world. The greatest person is the cloud.If he comes out, I’ll be covered."nike shox nzUgg BootsThe mouse father went to talk to the cloud. “Hello! Mr. Cloud. I know you are the greatest person in the world. Would you marry my daughter?” nike 360 air maxnike shox shoes“What? I’m not the greatest person in the world. The greatest person is the wind.If he comes out, I’ll be blown away.”cheap puma shoespuma drift catThe mouse father went to talk to the wind. “Hello! Mr. Wind. I know you are the greatest person in the world.Would you marry my daughter?” “What? I’m not the greatest person in the world. The greatest person is the wall. If he comes out, I’ll be stopped.”cheap nike shoxnike air max 360The mouse father went to talk to the wall. “Hello! Mr. Wall. I know you are the greatest person in the world. Would you marry my daughter?” “What? I’m not the greatest person in the world. The greatest person is YOU, the mouse.” “The greatest person in the world is … mouse?” “Yes, the greatest person in the world is mouse. See? If mouse comes out, I’ll be bit!” nike air maxpumas shoesThe mouse father was very happy. He finally knew mouse was the greatest person in the world. He would marry his daughter to the handsome mouse next door. cheap jeanscheap levis jeansed hardy jeans

Lauren Polo Shirts come with a graduation of colors on the chest. The new shiki Cheap polo

shirts logo is on the chest. Comes in all layres and can be worned tucked in or out Wholesale Polo Shirts -50% OFF. Also comes with sculpted collar and arm cuffs.Flat knit collar, Contrast placket and half